Thew

Thew

@Thew

yes im still making the videogame

Gamedev, originally a hat-juggling indie dork but now increasingly specialized in graphics programming. Day job working on surgical simulators, night job crafting artisinal Posts

avatar is by @softmode

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Cool game I've been ostensibly making for like ten years:
aerobat.thew.nu/
Artwork and graphics programming
twarchive.thew.nu/art/
Videogame longplay/analysis threads
twarchive.thew.nu/
bluesky
bsky.app/profile/amazingthew.bsky.social
twitter (dormant)
twitter.com/AmazingThew
mastodon (unused, might become used one day)
mastodon.gamedev.place/@amazingthew
Thew
@Thew

half-baked take

is it even possible to write a good superhero story. Given, like, the practical constraints of what actually MAKES a superhero story to begin with. The medium dictates that stories either

  • continue forever so nothing can end so nothing can matter
  • reboot and retell a classic story we've already seen fifty times

and then there's the plain fact that any superhero story that TRIES to radically reimagine or deconstruct the form, if it's any good, immediately gets bundled right back INTO the industry monolith in order to juice prestige in order to sell more spidermans (see: Watchmen, Kingdom Come, etc)

I dunno man I haven't read a comic book since I was like 15 so it's not like I'm writing this Take from a position of deep knowledge but like....... shit looks dire from here

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in reply to @Thew's post:

mrfb
@mrfb

i think it’s possible, absolutely! but rare. the superhero stuff that hits for me really has to be working at a character level first and understand deeply what it’s framing superheroism as on a metaphorical level. if it gets lost in the franchise sauce, it gets rough.

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CaptDedEyes
@CaptDedEyes

If you ask me, what bothers me about superheroes nowadays is that it's all about—more often than not—retaining the status quo instead of the heroes like, wrestling a negligent corporation or something.

The MCU quagmire we have now was not always like this in the beginning. Superheroes are being framed as like, the Super Police, but it doesn't have to be this way.

It gets especially tiring when they're recycled & remade like this ad nauseam.

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CaptDedEyes
@CaptDedEyes

The MCU has become so status quo, that their stories are essentially deadlocked into a plot structure about reinstating the status quo & I can't help but think that they have no intention of doing anything cool beyond that status quo.
Doesn't matter what they say, if that hero is destined to uphold our shitty capitalist system, then nothing they do matters.

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dante
@dante

i mean there's plenty, but they're (usually) not of the Big Two or they're just not getting the budget for Big Money Adaptations.

Umbrella Academy is a non-big-2 superhero story that i think is quite good; Doom Patrol is a big 2 superhero story that i do think is sick but due to the fact that it's actually good (read: has pathos for characters, growth, etc) it'll probably never be as popular as the big characters. which honestly is probably better in the long run

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